Magnificent night in the harem

Virtuoso: Igor Zelensky

Ismene Brown

12:01AM BST 28 Apr 2004

Ismene Brown reviews Zelensky and Friends at the Albert Hall

Igor Zelensky, one of the outstanding dancers of our era, invited three of his favourite ballerinas from around the world to perform three of his favourite ballets, and they all performed as expected. You hardly need superlatives added.

The blond, 6ft 2in Zelensky, now 34, danced with New York City Ballet as well his home company the Kirov, and has been a regular Royal Ballet guest partner for Darcey Bussell. And his influence worldwide as well as his flawless taste in leading ladies were eminently on display in this ambitious one-night production.

Circumstances were far from ideal. The Albert Hall is a rotten ballet venue, and somehow tends to encourage ice-skating-crowd behaviour: applause at every pause, camera-flashes and noisy late arrivals. But it had been well arranged, with the Russian Orchestra of London banked upstage behind an uncurtained dancing floor in front.

The audience knew they were seeing something stellar, from Ulyana Lopatkina’s first step on stage. The jewel of the Kirov, appearing in the ethereal “Shades” scene from La Bayadère, is already, at only 30, a near-divinity of the art, who marries in her tall, willowy frame the image and the spirit of ballerina legend.

Related Articles

The pride of her head and arms commands the grandeur of centuries, she radiates an untouchability and spiritual raptness, and yet she also seems to float on music as softly as a night mist across harp strings. Zelensky, as the lover responsible for her murder, treated her as if praying he could deserve her.

He brought a similarly winning hopefulness to his playing of the god in Balanchine’s marvellous quartet to Stravinsky, Apollo.

His Terpsichore was Maria Kowroski, from New York City Ballet, a long-legged, beautiful and juicily witty Balanchinean, who could not help making the other goddesses, a pretty Russian pair, look like novitiates. The tousled Zelensky and chic Kowroski were two individuals fully engaged in exploring existence, he to learn, she to teach – and thoroughly enjoying each other.

Off Parnassus and down in the harem, Zelensky is equally awesome. As the Golden Slave in Fokine’s Scheherazade, he made a memorably grovelling entrance, throwing himself sensationally at chief concubine Zobeide’s feet to kiss her inner thigh. That he and Svetlana Zakharova of the Bolshoi made this fascinatingly erotic, rather than tacky, was down to the intense, Russian seriousness with they looked through the tinsel to find desperate emotions, love, fear.

Petite Zakharova is half cat, half snake, all woman, and Zelensky seemed to hover ecstatically mid-air in his dashingly high jumps. Sultans, odalisques and fat, key-jangling eunuchs from the Latvian Ballet sported colourfully around the doomed pair, the orchestra under the commendable Valery Ovsiannikov played Rimsky-Korsakov’s richly sexy music well, In the slightly rackety circumstances it was an amazing night.